Given the choices, I can enthusiastically vote for Hillary Clinton. But she’s probably going to listen to these idiots and it’s going to come with a heavy price. I’ll predict right now that if she only serves one term, it will be the foreign policy establishment nitwits “talking to themselves” and not listening to the American people that will be the cause.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Yes, and that Putin-Trump campaign gambit will come back to bite in loss of flexibility to deescalate tense situations and reduce nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and clean up mines and cluster weapons.
We may find that the more rapid degradation of our environment is coming through the destruction of high-price war faster that global climate change.
I think she will run into the LBJ buzzsaw if she doesn’t gain control of her own perspective and control her advisers, who became too comfortable becoming media stars on the news shows.
I think there is a mood coming for significantly reducing military expenditures and some Trump-like figure might just campaign on something like that in 2018. Fifteen years of war is longer than Americans have ever endured. We are not set up for permanent war and it is doubtful that even nominal democratic forms can survive permanent war.
Nonetheless I voted straight ticket today and hope that all of them win. More transformation locally and the state level will be the good news.
Only a blowout landslide that can bring in room for criticism of Clinton from the critics of the national security state can stop this repeat of LBJ’s continuation of the tougher than Republicans position that escalated Vietnam. Peace with honor is such a seductive trap.
This is the real baggage. At least we missed a couple of wars.
I don’t see how we stop burning all that war machine cash without a major economic correction…Dems have seen that movie before.
There it is in a nutshell. The war machine generates jobs. End of story.
The total number of Americans working for that machine as members of the armed forces, in the production of armaments and as suppliers to all of those workers right on down the line…merchants, workers on all levels from mortgage holders and other lenders, retail sales and services on down through dishwashers, busboys, gardeners, etc….is huge.
Scale down the war machine? We cannot afford to do that. Massive unemployment and serious recession would soon follow unless the federal government put into place some sort of domestic work program…God knows the country’s infrastructure certainly needs one…that took up the slack. And even if someone did try to make that happen, the people who control that industrial war machine and their hired lackeys in Washington would resist it every step of the way.
So…same old same old once again.
War is a Racket-Major General Smedley Butler
I repeat “…something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people.”
Yup.
War is a business.
Big business.
War is the only business at which the U..S. excels today. Win, lose or draw, it makes money on a grand scale.
And Hillary Clinton is its candidate.
End of that story as well.
Why haven’t we seen a nuclear war yet? God’s grace, perhaps? The intercession of well-meaning aliens?
Naaaaahhh…it’s simple if you ignore the complexity.
It’d be bad for business.
Very bad.
Sigh…
AG
But, but… rebuilding all those demolished cities in Europe, as well as those flattened by LIttle Boy and Fat Man, was big business.
Indeed. All part of the racket.
But…after a nuclear war, there will no longer be any “businesses” as we currently recognize them.
Just people trying to survive.
If that.
So…no nukes as far as “business” is concerned.
Nutcase radicals? People who believe that they will go to Paradise if they kill non-believers?
That’s a different story.
Where we stand now? It will only take one nuclear spark to set off the big guns, and nukes have gone missing for many years.
UH oh!!!
AG
There is something like three trillion dollars of infrastructure we could use to burn some cash. I think Clinton has proposed some spemding here, as Sander’s did.
The critical distinction is that he meant it, and she didn’t, of course.
What’s the over under on a no-fly zone getting us into a shooting war with Russia (and then Europe abandoning us because we were the aggressor)? I might as well take some of that action while I can.
Alon Ben-David, Jerusalem Post – 9/27/2015
http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/May-it-never-end-The-uncomfortable-truth-about-the-war-in
-Syria-419246
Hillary Clinton, speech to AIPAC – 3/21/2016
http://time.com/4265947/hillary-clinton-aipac-speech-transcript/
The 1964 scenario — averting disaster with a widely perceived wackaloon Repub candidate only to get a Dem, fairly solid and good on DP who decides to launch the country for no good reason and with little public enthusiasm into a calamitous FP venture — has long concerned me about Hillary.
I have to hope she comes to her senses about Syria and her obsession with a no fly zone and ousting Assad, perhaps with some progressive pressure between now and January. Sadly though, the progressives have been rather too exclusively focused on domestic issues and their other narrow interests, while rarely engaging to question what we are doing militarily overseas. Others have noted how little dissent there is in the MSM wrt offering a counter to the serious deterioration in our relations with Russia. We may soon regret this long silence.
I’ll be voting for her despite these concerns as there is no alternative.
No to no fly zones.
Yep. This was always my concern with her, none of the other nonsense. I really don’t understand the FP establishment’s view of “loss of American leadership”; it’s like they live on another planet. I think the power that they’re plugged into goes to their heads. American is in a much, much more powerful position in 2016 than it was in 2008. That’s because President Obama told them to shut up more often than not. And when he let them have their way, the results have been disappointing. Libya’s a disaster, but the FP establishment was pushing for a useless no-fly zone and other expensive, deadly, but unworkable “solutions” because “we have to do something” – don’t forget that it could have been even worse.
Anyway, I have my concerns about Hillary’s FP, but maybe we’ll be surprised. I hope to be pleasantly surprised that Hillary talks a hawk’s game but has learned a lot from watching President Obama up close.
Yep. I’m not certain where to go with this. The good news is that these papers are all being written by people without jobs in the current administration hoping to get jobs or “influence” with the next one. But we really do have a big problem with foreign policy “thinkers” if the most “dovish” policy they can think of is Obama’s foreign policy. Its hardly “dovish” at all. Its stupid. Our serious policy thinkers are all stupid and I don’t know what we should do about it. Burn down the Kennedy School and Georgetown?
Bush’s policy is not the starting point with Obamas being the end point in terms of possibility. If Bush’s policy was a complete failure, why on earth would use use that as the basis for moderation or centrism in any way? Bush’s policy was insane. Obama’s less so. So lets split the difference and call it the middle.
It’s the “one side wants a french dinner but the date wants anthrax and tire rims” problem all over again. Only this time no one is even bothering with the French dinner. One side wants Anthrax and Tire Rims, the other wants Anthrax and grilled cheese, so lets split the difference and have grilled cheese and tire rims instead. Winning!
Syria’s a mess and a real nightmare. However, that being said, the US cannot decide what to do in Syria (or even in a few other places in the Middle East) until the State Department boffins decide just which Middle Eastern power, Saudi Arabia or Iran, they believe we should support long term. Right now, the boffins have us supporting BOTH sides in Syria and it’s making us look foolish. It’s also prolonging the war. So, do we go with Iran and its clients in Syria and Iraq or the Saudi’s (and possibly the Turks) with their support for the real danger in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East? The debates on just which alternative to choose must be fascinating deep inside the bowels of Foggy Bottom.
For ‘bowels of Foggy Bottom.’ The consequences of the Iraq disaster are still playing out; there is nothing to be done in Syria but concede to Assad for now.
They are probably wondering how to get Abdullah II back on the throne in Mecca.
“Less clear is whether such a policy has any support among an American public weary of war in the Middle East and largely opposed to foreign aid.”
Until those mental constraints against foreign aid are lifted, the idea that we’re going to have the same military/CIA/IMF Loan constraints on our ideas. The “lets just split the difference between Bush and Obama and call ourselves reasonable” approach is actually a horrible and irrational place to be. These aren’t even polar opposites.
I do think Obama’s approach is far more circumspect than Bush, obviously. But the idea that we need to be involved everywhere and if we don’t have interests that can be clearly articulated, our allies do, so lets get involved in some way (Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen) has been less expensive, but not any more stabilizing.
Perhaps the question is how do we not do things like Yemen. It’s tough to sell a state billions in military capability and then constrain its use. Yemen probably is an existential threat to the House of Saud; and maybe not the only one.
We’ve been too clever by half and while the US faces real threats we seem to allow our campaigns (anti-communist, anti-drug, anti-terrorist) to get ahead of our common sense and modesty. We sometimes ennoble unfit minor allies whom suit our short term purposes but whom collectively erode our options for a long time.
This is why foreign policy is almost always subsumed by domestic stereotypes and narratives; geopolitics is a long game.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/20/syria-and-the-left-time-to-break-the-silence/
The only two certainties are: 1) increased American involvement in Syria will make an already terrible situation even worse, and 2) Hillary Clinton is constitutionally incapable of understanding that.
That’s actually a fairly good article and it does point to the box that the left wing understanding of foreign policy has placed itself in. While it is very easy to poke fun at the neo-cons and their intransigent bias, huge blind spots, irrational beliefs in permanent American hegemony, expensive adventuring, and absolutely shameful devaluation of human life, the left has jettisoned quite a few values itself. They have the virtue of being locked out of the decision-making process, but is there a reason to believe that the world would be better with them in power?
Instead of peace, it is a sham assemblage of beliefs that anyone who can express anti-Imperial sentiment is somehow the good guy and we can excuse any evidence to the contrary as long as the good guy looks like he’s fighting the Empire in some way shape or form. Its a fairly toxic set of values. Its the western left hoping that someone foreign will win its own domestic battles against conservatives at no cost to itself because the attacks will be successful in far off places.
Let history note that the practice of executing American citizens without trial began under Barack Obama, to the indifference of 99.9% of Democratic voters.
Okay. This is as straight up lie.
American citizens have been killed without trial in foreign battlefields by their fellow Americans with malice aforethought since the Barbary Wars had American citizens fighting with the Barbary Kingdoms and their allies.
See you keep missing the part where those American Citizens are giving comfort and aide to persons or groups in a legally declared combat action or are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
No one has ever disputed that the American Citizens who left the US and joined the Nazi’s industrial machine and died by bombings in cities behind enemy lines were immune from action because they were US citizens. Hell on the other side of the Atlantic shoot/bomb on site orders for Tokyo Rose were explicitly given!
But somehow, joining a known terrorist organization that had killed Americans, is actively at war with the US according to said terrorist organizations own words, has the US actively and publicly engaged in combat against said terrorist organization, and aiding and providing comfort to that organization by actively fomenting insurrection and rebellion in the Domestic US and consulting on operational matters on foreign targets means that US citizenship makes one immune from a drone strike and is illegal? It is to laugh that you think this is a good argument to make.
Don’t forget — Bin Laden was seized in a warrantless search and killed out of hand.
I like your post, and agree.
But no such thing happened with Tokyo Rose. Please read up about her here
Her name was Iva Ikuko Toguri D’Aquino, and it was a tragedy and a miscarriage of justice.
.
Ah… this appears to be a case of me not doing all of my due diligence and mixing together third and fourth hand accounts of what my Great Grandfather told me he had been told, what my Dad and Grandmother telling me what my paternal Grandfather the Master Chief Petty Officer had told them he had been told, and what my maternal Grandfather the medic corpsman told me he had seen and been told, with knowledge I had from actual study of the Pacific Theater of school, various source books, and video documentaries.
I knew Tokyo Rose was multiple people, and I knew that there had been a treason conviction of an American Citizen, but I had not known it was a bad conviction.
My various relatives had all told me that ‘the brass’ were really pissed at the English speaking broadcasts by what were believed to be Japanese Americans, and in what may be apocryphal war stories, been told to ‘shoot the witch’ on sight if they ever saw her.
They were hard, hard years for so many people, in so many places.
Many years ago we were building a house for a guy when this happened…
Reagan visits Bitburg
The workers were all talking about it at lunch, and the owner suddenly started telling us his story…how as a teenager he came ashore a few days after D-Day and spent months fighting across Germany, losing friends along the way, and that there were no good Waffen SS, that there was no forgiving what they did. It was very emotional for him as he told us he lost everyone he started with. He was die hard republican, but he would never forgive Reagan.
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I rated this by mistake and cannot change it to none.
Booman Tribune ~ Casual Observation
I think the box consists largely of the focus on military options. It is the logic of the empire creeping in. “Who should win the war” is not the only question one can pose, one can instead ask how to increase the chance for peace and how to care for refugees.
If you want a general principle I think if you send arms or bomb you should also accept the refugees. After all, if you claim your involvement is for the good of the people there how can you refuse the judgement that said people does with their feet?
There is no such thing as foreign policy. Each mention of any offshore actor is an allegory for some domestic faction. Pitting domestic factions against each other is one of theirs, not one of ours. Briefly, the United States engages in overseas adventures as a displacement; we “pick up crappy little countries and throw them against the wall” because the Republican Party does not quite dare to do that to its domestic enemies (or prefers more passive-aggressive techniques). It took President Obama too long to learn to draw bright lines of that kind, but no future Democratic President will have the same structural incentives as in the past. This is one of the backhand benefits of the way Trump has put his people in a box, where they are isolated and clearly outnumbered.
Collectively, these are very close to the worst people in the world. As an institution, they are very close to pure evil. War-mongers totally insulated from the devastation and suffering their casual war-gaming unleashes across the planet, permanently safe not only from the horror of war, but from any shred of accountability or justice. It infuriates me how these mental insects strut around acting as if they know how to protect “us.” Our planet would be immeasurably better if they all simply vanished. They have learned absolutely nothing from decades of American failure in the Middle East. And why should they, there are contracts to make and bonuses to distribute. I cannot imagine a higher level of contempt that what I feel for them. Hell, compared to them, I’m almost forgiving of fossil fuel corporations, and they are practically blood relations to those war-mongers.
Look at this bloodthirsty maniac:
I would honestly be less offended if he were having relations with a dead animal. This video is simply horrifying and chilling.
Imagine being in the Oval Office and hearing that shit day after day after day.
.
That’s Mike Morell, former Acting Director of the CIA.
Sad to me that we are having this discussion less than 3 weeks before the election. One of the primary reasons I didn’t support Hillary in 2008 (and still don’t though I will vote for her) is her hawkishness and tightness with the hawkish foreign policy establishment. Unless something is done about the banking/investment speculation industry, along with the MIC, all the rest of her policy initiatives will be nibbling along the edges, with the possible exception of the SCOTUS. I don’t see her having the interest, will or capability to take on those two behemoths.